‘If I were starting out again…': Life and writing advice from David Hill

The Spinoff

a day ago

After nearly half a century as a full-time writer, David Hill considers what he might have done differently.
This year is my 44th as a full time writer. I've been earning a sort of living with words for a sliver over half my time on the planet. Feel free to do the maths.
If I were starting out again, would I do it differently? Hell, yes.
I'd start trying to write novels sooner. For nearly a decade, I was so obsessed with making a living that I took on only small-scale projects, many of them ephemeral: short stories, reviews, brief plays, columns, etc. I also lacked the confidence, the guts to try anything requiring novel-sized skills and stamina. I'll explain that part later.
It wasn't till our teenage daughter's friend died, and the short story I began writing to acknowledge her courage was still going at page 73, that I realised I'd lurched into a longer form almost by default. With that form came the rewards of watching your narrative choose its own direction, making friends with your characters, trying different voices, etc – the rewards that novels may bring.
Plus, novels can be a financial investment. You might earn virtually nothing during the months/years you're working on one, but if you're lucky, royalties and the Public Lending Right may keep bringing a return long after the toil involved has faded from memory.
Along with this, if I were re-beginning as a full-timer, I'd try to have a more comprehensive vision. As I say, 44 years ago, that vision was mostly financial survival. I had few plans beyond the next fortnight. I'd been able to take 1981 off from high school teaching to write, thanks to an ICI Writer's Bursary – $3,000 kept you going for several months in those days. I wrote an awful adult novel which met multiple rejections and doesn't exist in any form now.
Anyway, I taught for another year, and started off in 1983 feeling that anything longform was beyond me. Janet Frame compared novel writing to 'going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land', and my first dismal shopping trip put me off for years. With hindsight, I'd try to have more faith in myself, to aim higher and sooner. How easily said; how easily postponed.
I'd also drink less coffee during those early days. I suspect my wife Beth and our kids found it a touch disconcerting to come home from work or school to a figure with red rotating eyeballs.
I'd learn proper keyboard skills. It seems so trivial, but I've always been a two-finger, head-bent-over-the-keys user. After 44 years of stupidly bad posture, my neck is now permanently stuffed, and I have to work in 15-minute spells. Serves me right.
I'd keep a copy of everything. Everything. It's relatively easy now, thanks to computers, files, that thing called The Cloud, which I still envisage as white and fluffy. But for… 20?… 25? years of hand-written drafts and manual-typewriter copies, I chucked away so much, especially when it was rejected. I still half-remember lost work, know I could now see what to do with it, shape it better. But it's gone forever. Since going electronic – and if that makes me sound like a cyborg, who am I to argue? – I throw away absolutely nothing.
I'd learn to say 'No' early on. Writers are constantly being asked to talk to Rotary, to give advice on how to get 10-year-old Zeb reading, to look over the history of the local golf club that Jack whom you've never heard of is writing. Early on, I cravenly surrendered a lot of hours to such unpaid requests (demands, occasionally). I still agree to do so in some cases, but it took me a long time to learn how to mention the issue of time and expenses. Carl, the excellent gardener down the road, charges $60 an hour. I use the comparison sometimes.
From the start, I'd try to see my readers as potential friends, not critics.
I'd find an accountant immediately. Yes, they cost, but you can claim them on tax. Plus they add a certain legitimacy to your return, and they think of expenses that would challenge any fantasy writer's imagination. Mine (thanks heaps, Robyn; never retire) even got me a few dollars back on 'Deterioration of Office Fittings', as in shampooing the rugs in my office after the cat puked on them.
If I were starting out again, I'd try to stay reasonably technologically savvy, to accept that your writing life needs to change when resources and tools change. Specifically, I'd hope to respond more quickly to the arrival of something like online publishing, e-books, e-zines, etc. I ignored them for years, kept telling myself they were a fad, something ephemeral and distracting. Yes, just like a 14th century literary hack sticking to vellum manuscripts, and knowing this printed book nonsense wouldn't last. My denial – my continued denial; I still struggle to accept that anything other than hard copy is 'real' publishing – has cost me so many contacts and contracts.
I'd try also to prepare myself for shifts in my abilities. Over the past half-dozen years, I've shrunk as a short story writer. I no longer have the imaginative spark or the energy to find the dramatic switch, the revelation, the power within a small space that makes a good short story. Conversely, my ability to assemble, to build, seems to have edged up a degree. Essays and novels attract me more and more. If I were restarting, I'd resolve to feel pleased with what I can still do, not despondent at what I can't. It would no doubt go the way of my other resolutions.
Let's finish with four questions:
1. Would I have an agent?
I never have, partly from laziness and meanness, partly because they weren't common in the early 1980s when I went full-time, and partly (I can't phrase this without sounding vainglorious) because I've been around long enough in our little country for my name to ring the odd bell. A distant, cracked bell. But if I were starting now, I certainly would. Many publishers these days won't consider submissions unless they come via an agent. And, of course, a skilled agent knows the where/when/who to save you so much hassle. They can also soften the jolt of rejection … a bit.
2. Would I enrol in a writing course?
Like agents, they weren't around much in the Jurassic. There were writers' groups all over the country. There were journalism schools. But organised instruction, direction, encouragement for fiction, poetry, drama, creative non-fiction? Pretty much zilch. If I were starting now, I'd certainly look hard at the collegiality, informed critiques, professional presentation, funding sources and multiple other facets that such courses can provide, along with their environment that makes you write.
3. Would I self-publish?
It's an option that has flourished, become a legitimate alternative, lost the stigma attached to it when I started off. 'Vanity publishing', we arrogantly called it then. But I probably wouldn't do it. I'm too ignorant of what's involved; I treasure the skills of the editors and publishers who work on and always improve my stuff. And … well, I took up this job to be an author, not an entrepreneur.
4. Would I do it all over again?
See final words of paragraph two above. How many other jobs are there where you have to shave only twice a week, where a 10-year-old consumer writes to you saying 'After I read your book, I felt all kind and good', where you get up from the keyboard after an hour and know you've made something that never existed in the world before?
I hope to be feeling exactly the same when I've been in the said job for 55 years. All I need is for medical science to keep taking giant strides.